Influence

We all have an influence over others. We will either have a good influence or a bad influence on someone. We can choose what kind of influence we have on others by choosing how we will act and react around them. When we make good choices, we will tend to have a good influence on others, but when we make bad choices, we naturally will have a negative influence on others. We have control over what kind of influence we have on others. How we use that power of choice will often dictate how much time we get to spend with that individual.

The best way you can influence others is to show them you can control yourself.

We cannot control others or even our circumstances. The one thing we can control is ourselves. We choose what kind of presence we bring with us into a situation. Once we are in a situation, other people and events will do things that are out of our control, but we always have control over how we choose to respond to those happenings. How we respond to that situation will lead to a new situation, and how we respond to that new situation will lead to another new situation, and so on. Everyone’s life is unique, and the situations you encounter will be different than the ones I encounter. Still, more or less, whatever situation we find ourselves in today is a result of our previous choices on how to respond to previous situations. For instance, we can have this conversation because both you and I chose to respond to the riggers of education with diligence and learned to read. 

Focus your life on God's kingdom and let Him take care of all the other things of life.

One of the most important responses we have control over is how we respond to God’s love for us. We can choose to respond to God’s kingdom with apathetic indifference or we can make His kingdom the focus of our lives. How we choose to respond to God’s action in life will bring His kingdom among us and change how we see the world and respond to other events. God is not confined to our world, so His actions of bringing His kingdom into the world is both an event that concerns life in this world and life outside of this world. As we choose how to respond to God’s kingdom, we see that the more we become indifferent to God’s kingdom, the more the things of this world will become important to us. However, the more we keep God’s kingdom as our focus, the more we will become indifferent to the concerns of the world. Yes, we will continue to care about injustice and the needs of the poor, but our primary focus will be how those issues relate to the kingdom of God. As Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). When the kingdom of God is our focus, all the other concerns of the world will fall into alignment with the rest of our God-given priorities.